Member Questions

Any advice for a new working mom with a newly self-employed/stay at home dad? I am totally secure with his ability to be a great parent but I am sure that there are pitfalls. Our daughter is about 2 months old and I will be returning to work in about 1 month. Advice?”

3 replies so far...

Hire someone to help him out for at least a few hours a day! My husband is also a stay-at-home Dad and while he does a great job, he wears out more quickly than a woman would, and needs time to do his own thing. Also, on days when he has been alone with the baby, as soon as I come home, he passes her to me and doesn't look back, which is understandable because he needs to refresh himself. But, for me it's a nightmare, because as much as I want to spend as much of the evening as I can with my daughter, after working all day, I still need a minute to take my work clothes off and grab something to eat, or get my things ready for the next day, and he is too exhausted to allow me any time to do that. When he has had a break during the day, he is more accomodating to giving me a little break at night, and we both manage to get what we need.

My husband has been a stay-at-home dad to our 11 month old twins since they were 3 months old (I, too, had to return to work). He is not a natural nurturer, nor is he someone that instinctively pays attention to details. Once our twins reached 10 weeks, we had a feeding/napping/sleeping routine down pat, and when I returned to work, he became the "expert" on their schedule, rest and food needs, and he really embraced the roll as primary parent. It's funny, neither of us find the situation ideal...as he would like to be the financial provider out there in the work force, and I would love to stay at home (at least part of the time). But, circumstances were that we had no better choice. I will admit that the first month or two was an adjustment for the both of us...we really had to stick together, and in fact, grew closer in so many ways. We have lived through the personal sacrifices, and our kids are happy, healthy, and close to both of us...I couldn't have asked for a better start for them (lots of kids don't ever have that kind of special time with their dads this involved).

We look towards a future in which we may reverse our roles...but for now, I have all the emergency numbers and CPR/choking instructions hanging in the door to one of our cabinets, and we made 2 practice runs to the children's hospital nearby so he'd know where to go in an emergency. Also, his sister (whose baby is about the same age as yours), calls him all the time for support and advice. Tell your husband to check out his blog "Unreflections of a stay-at-home father of twins." Hang in there!

I have not been in this situation but my husband did stay home with our daughter for a few weeks after I was already back at work. The one thing that I think I did wrong to start is expect him to just follow my routine and do things as I did them. We'd get into a lot of arguments over minor things -- like him putting our daughter down for a nap 1/2 hour later or not feeding her at a certain time -- and eventually I realized that as long as he was generally keeping her well-fed, rested, and happy I had to back off. Really hard for a control freak like me:) but that's something that made both of us much happier eventually.